Christina Georgina Rossetti(1830-1894).
Less great but hardly less interesting than her brother was Christina Georgina Rossetti, who, like him, wrote forThe Germ, though she published no volume of poems for many years afterwards. Though her course extends far beyond the limits of the period, the poetical work for which she is most memorable was chiefly done within it, and her closest connexions belong to it too. Her first published volume wasGoblin Market, and other Poems(1862); her second,The Prince’s Progress, and other Poems(1866). Then, after some prose tales, came the book of nursery rhymes,Sing-Song(1872). From this time onwards, except forA Pageant, and other Poems(1881), Miss Rossetti’s books were chiefly of a devotional character; but one of them,Time Flies(1885), contains some of the finest of her verse.
The religious poems form a most important section of Christina Rossetti’s works. She is one of the most profoundly devotional of modern writers. Unlike Arnold and Clough, she is not a poet of doubt but of faith; unlike Browning’s, her creed is rather a creed of feeling than of intellect. But while she is not touched with the doubt of the age she is touched with its sadness. Her devotional pieces have sometimes, as inAdvent, the ring of conquering faith, but more often they have in them something of a wail. What Dr. John Brown called the ‘inevitable melancholy’ of women seems to find a voice in Christina Rossetti; and though she is bound by her faith to an ultimately optimistic view, her habitual tone of mind is gloomy. ‘Vanity of vanities’ is the title of her finest sonnet, and it is also the conclusion she draws from the life of this world.
One of the praiseworthy points of Christina Rossetti’s work is that, while invariably imaginative, it never fails to be clear. In this respect she far surpasses her brother. The marks of the artist’s chisel are, as we have seen, too conspicuous in his work; in hers they are invisible. Yet few writers are more carefully artistic than she. Less ambitious in her aims than Dante Rossetti, her work impresses the reader with its adequacy to those aims. Herein she has an advantage over Mrs. Browning also. The latter has produced a far greater body of work, and at her best writes with far more strength than Miss Rossetti; but on the other hand Miss Rossetti is free from those astonishing lapses into bathos or triviality or mere bad taste which disfigure Mrs. Browning’s poetry. The two poetesses meet most closely in their respective series of sonnets—Monna Innominataand theSonnets from the Portuguese. These are among the masterpieces of each, for both were peculiarly happy in the sonnet form; Christina Rossetti because she was an artist by nature, Mrs. Browning probably because the form compelled her to be an artist. The comparison is unquestionably in favour of Mrs. Browning. TheSonnets from the Portugueseare richer and deeper thanMonna Innominata. They record a love actually felt; and they are the product of an intellect wider, though perhaps less fine than Christina Rossetti’s. But as regards the form, it is by no means clear that the advantage lies with the elder writer. Mrs. Browning’s sonnets are sometimes laboured in expression; Christina Rossetti’s have an inimitable ease, all the more delightful because in modern poetry it is rare. Her beautifully pure style is one of her greatest merits; and it is also one of the most striking points of contrast between her and her brother. A sonorous richness is characteristic of his style, a fine simplicity of hers. This simplicity,and the fineness of touch and delicacy of taste which accompanied it, served her well in those poems of the supernatural where her imaginative flight is highest. She is a mistress in the fairy realm, and in its own classGoblin Marketis unsurpassed.
William Edmondstoune Aytoun(1813-1865).
Another school which sprang up about the middle of the century, taking its rise in the longing for something deeper and more satisfying than had been recently in vogue, was that nicknamed ‘the Spasmodic.’ The name was fixed upon the school by the extremely clever satirist of it, William Edmondstoune Aytoun, himself a poet of a very different family, that of Scott. Aytoun is best known from hisLays of the Scottish Cavaliers(1848), narratives of martial exploit and tragic sorrow written in animated but excessively rhetorical verse. He was also, in conjunction with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Theodore Martin, the author of theBon Gaultier Ballads(1845), one of the most amusing collections of comic verse of this century. His satire of the Spasmodic School is contained inFirmilian(1854), a mock-serious piece purporting to be by a member of the school. It was at the time customary to say that Aytoun had killed the Spasmodic School. If he had done so he would hardly have deserved well of literature. But though it is true that the Spasmodic Poets shot up like a rocket only to come down like the spent stick, both the rise and the fall were due partly to whims of popular taste, while the main cause of the fall lay in defects of the writers which satire did not make and could do little to remedy. On the whole,Firmilianwas more likely to have helped the school than to have hurt it if it had contained in itself the seeds of long life. But the name ‘spasmodic’ was only too accurately descriptive of more than its style,—unfortunately so, for boththe chief members, Sydney Dobell and Alexander Smith, possessed talents for poetry in some respects very high.
Sydney Dobell(1824-1874).
Sydney Dobell had the misfortune to be born a member of a narrow and intense religious sect, in which his talents caused him to be regarded as the destined instrument for some grand design of providence. He outgrew the sect, but never quite outgrew the education it had given him and the ideas it had instilled. From about 1850 he devoted himself chiefly to literature. His writings areThe Roman(1850),Balder(1853),Sonnets on the War(1855), in which he collaborated with Alexander Smith, andEngland in Time of War(1856). But his health failed, and though he lived eighteen years longer he wrote little more of consequence.
‘He never weeded his garden,’ wrote Dr. John Brown of him, ‘and will, I fear, be therefore strangled in his waste fertility.’ This is the central truth about Dobell. Few poets are so uneven, perhaps hardly any poet capable of rising so high has ever sunk so low. Many passages are mere fustian, some are outrages against all taste; but others have a sublimity not often surpassed.
At the beginning Dobell gave promise of development which, if fulfilled, would have led him very high indeed. In the short interval betweenThe RomanandBalderthe youthful author had grown surprisingly.The Roman, a fervid poem carrying on a Byronic tradition of interest in Italy, has all the faults of youth. It is too long, and it is bombastic. Its chief merit is width of sympathy; and it also contains here and there hints that promise in the future reach of thought. InBalderwe see this promise redeemed. It is far more forcible thanThe Romanand it is loaded with thought.Balderwas a poem of vast design. It was to be in three parts, of which onlyone was ever published. The purpose was, in the words of the author’s preface, to trace ‘the progress of a human being from Doubt to Faith, from Chaos to Order. Not of Doubt incarnate to Faith incarnate, but of a doubtful mind to a faithful mind.’ The design therefore bears a certain general resemblance to that ofParacelsus.Balderis not equal to that great poem. It is even more difficult while less profound, and it is especially far less of a unity. It is, strictly speaking, paradoxical to regard as a whole what proclaims itself as a part; but a part of a great design may have completeness in itself, and thisBalderhas not.
Again, if we regard the poem in the light most favourable to it, as a collection of passages in verse, we have to admit the most amazing inequalities. Few passages in literature are more hideous than the description of the monster on which Tyranny rides; but, on the other hand, the best passages may challenge comparison with all but the greatest poetry. Even this comparison has been sometimes made. The description of Chamouni has been said to rival the great hymn of Coleridge, and that of the Coliseum the celebrated stanzas of Byron on the same subject. The comparison, especially with Coleridge, is unkind to Dobell. At his best he cannot rival one of the most poetic minds in all literature in one of its highest flights. Nevertheless, both passages are exceedingly good. The subjects moreover are characteristic. Magnitude and massiveness are congenial to Dobell, and almost necessary to draw out his best. ‘Alone among our modern poets,’ says Dr. Garnett, ‘he finds the sublime a congenial element.’ It is in such passages as those named, and in Balder’s magnificent vision of war, that Dobell shows the grand material of poetry that was in him.
For this reason it might have been expected that Dobell’snext volumes,Sonnets on the WarandEngland in Time of War, would have been more uniformly good.The Romanproves that he had the fire of patriotism in his veins, and many passages of his verse show that this fire was not all spent, as most of Byron’s was, to warm other nations than his own. Of all the poets then living, Dobell had the largest share of Tennyson’s patriotic fervour and of his love for warlike themes. Nevertheless, theSonnets on the Warare of but moderate merit; and thoughEngland in Time of Warcontains some powerful pieces, it has all the inequality of Dobell’s earlier poetry. Dobell had learnt little of the art of self-criticism, and whether he had the capacity to learn must remain doubtful. He afterwards wrote a few fine poems, such asThe Magyar’s New-Year-EveandThe Youth of England to Garibaldi’s Legion, but broken health prevented him from undertaking any great work. He remains therefore a poet great by snatches. A selection, including the passages already mentioned,An Evening Dream, with its stirring ring of heroism, the fascinating ballad,Keith of Ravelston, and some others, might be made, which would greatly raise his reputation. The volume would not be large, but the contents would be excellent.
Alexander Smith(1829-1867).
Next in importance among the Spasmodic Poets to Dobell was Alexander Smith. He was the son of a pattern-designer of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, and in his now little known but quietly pleasing novel,Alfred Hagart’s Household, he has embodied a good deal of autobiographic matter. He was also the author of a thoughtful and well-written volume of essays,Dreamthorp. But he is first and chiefly a poet. His earliest volume wasA Life Drama(1853), which excited a degree of interest rarely roused by the first work of a young author. It was warmly praised and loudlycondemned; and the result of the controversy that raged over it was to make the author for a short time one of the most prominent writers in the kingdom. But his fame speedily declined, andCity Poems(1857), though it contains some of his best work, was coldly received.Edwin of Deira(1861) was somewhat more successful, but was far from reviving the interest which had centred inA Life Drama.
The present generation, which has been unjust to Dobell, has dealt still more hardly with Alexander Smith. The Nemesis of excessive praise is unjust depreciation, and both have been Smith’s lot. He has been denied the title of poet altogether; but he is a poet, and even a considerable one. He shares both the defects and the excellences of Dobell, never sinking so low, and, on the other hand, never rising as high. His execution is unequal, he rants, he uses metaphor to excess, he is by no means free from affectation. But though theLife Dramais crude and unequal, there is plenty of promise in it. There was ground to hope that the spirit from which it proceeded was like a turbid torrent which would by-and-by deposit its mud and flow on strong and clear. To those who hoped thusEdwin of Deirawas disappointing. A good deal of the mud had been deposited, the execution was more perfect, but there was less strength and less volume of thought than might have been expected. It is in his minor pieces and in occasional lines and passages that Smith shows best. There is rare beauty in the melancholy close of the lyricBarbarainHorton. The picture of the sphinx, ‘staring right on with calm eternal eyes,’ has the true touch of imagination; and so has the image of the wind smiting ‘his thunder-harp of pines.’Glasgowin theCity Poems, is a strong as well as a beautiful piece. There can be no question of the imaginative power of this picture of the city in its cloud of smoke pierced by sunlight:
‘When sunset bathes thee in his gold,In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled,Thy smoke is dusky fire;And, from the glory round thee poured,A sunbeam like an angel’s swordShivers upon a spire.Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream!While the blue night crept up the stream.’
Coventry Patmore(1823-1896).
There remain two or three considerable poets whom it is difficult to classify. Coventry Patmore cannot be placed in either the Pre-Raphaelite or the Spasmodic School, and though he has some points of affinity with the poets of the intellectual movement, they are not close enough to justify ranking him with them. Patmore is especially the poet of domestic love. His greatest work,The Angel in the House(1854-1856), was meant to be a poem on married life. In the opening the poet congratulates himself that he, though born so late, has had the good fortune to discover ‘the first of themes sung last of all.’ As he proceeded however he found his mistake, and never carried out his design; but it imparted the characteristic tone of quiet domestic affection to his verse. He may be described as the Wordsworth of the home. He is seldom if ever great, but his verse at its best has a simple sweetness, with an occasional dignity, that is exceedingly pleasing. It is unfortunate that against the merits of the better passages ofThe Angel in the Housethere has to be set the weakness of the letters of Jane. Patmore’s purpose was to fit the thought to the character; but merely weak thought and merely weak character have no right to a place in poetry such as this. There is no dramatic realisation and no humour to justify them.
The Unknown Eros(1877) is a work strangely differentfromThe Angel in the House; it is more lyrical and more ambitiously imaginative; and for this very reason it brings into greater prominence Patmore’s weaknesses. There is a frequent sense of effort. The meaning is often obscure, and there are here and there, as in the earlier poem, surprising lapses of taste. The poem recalls Drummond of Hawthornden, not only by the rhythm, but also by a certain ‘preciosity’ of diction and imagery.
The second Lord Lytton(1831-1891).
The second Lord Lytton, best known in literature by his pseudonym of Owen Meredith, must also be ranked among ‘the unattached’ of literature. He had a distinguished diplomatic career which more than once interrupted his pen. But, except for the intervals caused by his various ambassadorships and his eventful tenure of the Viceroyalty of India, Lytton was, from 1855 to his death, a diligent writer. In 1855Clytemnestra and other Poemsappeared, whileMarahwas a posthumous work. The greater part of Lytton’s writings is poetical, and their total bulk is very great. It is indeed too great for his fame, and most of his poems would be improved by condensation. Lytton presents a singular example of heredity, which, in his case, showed itself in a manner damaging to his reputation. We have seen how the first Lord Lytton veered with every turn of the popular taste. The second Lord Lytton changed his style, chameleon-like, with almost every poet he happened to be reading. The consequence is, in the first place, that his own style is not easily discovered; and in the second place that he has been accused of plagiarism with more show of reason than almost any other man of equal literary rank. It is not merely that he echoes successively the pensive sentiment and melancholy reflectiveness of Arnold, the rich diction of Tennyson, the headlong abundance of Browning, the lyrical sweetness of Shelley,or that he in a snatch or two almost paraphrases Byron. InLucile, his indebtedness to George Sand is far more extensive. It is true he avowed that he had taken from her the story of the piece; but the story is the principal part of it, and no writer ought to borrow quite so much from another. The fault is a serious one, and it is reason sufficient for the belief that Owen Meredith will never take a high place in poetry; yet his endowments were almost great, his taste was purer than his father’s, and had he been more independent-minded he might have stood high in the second class of the poets of the century.
J. B. Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley(1835-1895).
J. B. Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley, was a man of richer poetic gifts, who might have done very great work had he met with popular encouragement. He began his poetic career as early as 1859, but his first volume of importance wasPræterita, issued under the pseudonym of William Lancaster, in 1863. For the next ten years he was an active writer. Partly his own taste and partly admiration forAtalanta in Calydoninduced him to attempt the classical drama; and his two experiments,Philoctetes(1866) andOrestes(1867), rank among the most finished of their class. They secured the warm approval of the best judges, but they did not become popular. He tried novels, also without winning popularity; and after two more experiments in verse—Rehearsals(1870) andSearching the Net(1873)—he almost disappeared from the ranks of authors for twenty years; for theSoldier of Fortune, though bulky, can hardly be considered important. It was the reissue in 1893 of his best pieces under the title ofPoems Dramatic and Lyricalthat first made Lord de Tabley’s name widely known. So marked was the success of this collection that it was followed two years laterby another, which was less successful because it was the result of a less rigid selection.
These volumes represent Lord de Tabley at his best, and that best is very good indeed. Such pieces as theHymn to Astarte, theWoodland GraveandJael, would do honour to any poet. There is intense dramatic power in the last-named piece, and a rich magnificence of style in the others. A tendency to sameness may sometimes be detected. He has, for example, one favourite colour, and the whole world is seen by him bathed in an amber light. There are also here and there echoes of contemporary poets, such as Browning, and still more, Swinburne, whose fulness of sound attracted De Tabley. But he is an essentially independent poet, and had he been encouraged to write he would doubtless have grown increasingly independent. Few losses in contemporary literature are more serious than that occasioned by his almost complete silence between 1873 and 1893, just the years when, by reason of his age, his work ought to have been best. He was a great man unrecognised, and the failure to recognise is sometimes severely punished.
William Morris(1834-1896).
Most of Lord de Tabley’s contemporaries by birth belong rather to the subsequent period than to the Age of Tennyson. Even Swinburne did so, though before 1870 he had, by the publication ofAtalanta in Calydon(1865), enriched English literature with one of its most perfect dramas on the Greek model, and by thePoems and Ballads(1866) had ‘raised a storm, and founded a school.’ The fact that he founded a school makes him rather the poetical leader of the present generation than a member of the preceding one. In some ways Lord de Tabley has more affinity to this later band than to those who were under the dominion of Carlyle and Browning and Tennyson. He certainly shows the workings of a new spirit, and seemsto feel the old ideals insufficient; but his twenty years of literary eclipse serve to fix him chronologically rather among the older men. For a different reason William Morris, a man just one year older than De Tabley, also belongs, as a poet, to this period. Morris was a man who played many parts in life, and he played them not concurrently, but rather successively. In his characters as high priest of domestic art and as prophet to the Socialists he is identified with the closing quarter of the century; while his greatest achievements in poetry belong to the third quarter.The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems(1858) was his first volume of verse. Then after nine years cameThe Life and Death of Jason, followed almost immediately byThe Earthly Paradise(1868-1870). Morris afterwards translated theÆneidand theOdyssey, and he also did much to make familiar in England the spirit of Icelandic literature. HisSigurd the Volsung(1876) is certainly the finest English poem inspired by Scandinavia, and perhaps his greatest work.
Morris is the most prominent example in these later days of that revival of the mediæval spirit which was initiated by the Romanticists of the latter part of last century, which attained its fullest flower in Scott, and which shows itself in such varied aspects in Rossetti’s poetry, in the Pre-Raphaelite painters, and in the Oxford theologians. Morris exhibits it in a way quite his own. Chaucer more than any one else is his master in poetry. To him Morris reverted for the model of his verse, and the old poet’s influence is seen in the disciple’s mode of conception as well as in many turns of expression. One thing however Morris could not learn, though Chaucer was eminently qualified to teach it, and that was the true narrative spirit. Morris chose the narrative form, but the interest of hispoetry rarely lies in the story. He does not himself care greatly for the story. He is never passionate; he is too calm to enter deeply into the feelings or to be absorbed in the fortunes of his characters. The charm of his poetry resides rather in leisurely and restful beauty of description. In this respect it ranks high, but seldom attains absolute mastery. Nearly all of Morris is readable and enjoyable, but few of his lines linger in the memory, and perhaps the only one frequently quoted is that in which he describes himself as ‘the idle singer of an empty day.’ Morris was more than this, but it may be questioned whether there is enough either of the substance of thought in his verse or of melody and pure poetic beauty to keep it long alive.
MINOR POETS.
Sarah Flower Adams(1805-1848).
Sarah Flower Adams is sure of at least a small niche in the temple of the English poets were it but for the beautiful hymn, ‘Nearer, my God, to thee.’ HerVivia Perpetuais an ill-constructed drama, partly redeemed by fine passages.
William Allingham(1824-1889).
William Allingham was an Irish poet, of much taste, but of no great power. His inspiration is strangely fitful and uncertain, and after his removal to London, in consequence of the success of his earlier verses, it seemed almost wholly to desert him. He was for a time editor ofFraser’s Magazine.
John Stuart Blackie(1809-1895).
John Stuart Blackie, for many years Professor of Greek in Edinburgh University, was a very vigorous miscellaneous writer. He translated Æschylus, theIliadandFaust. He was very successful in the lighter lyrical strain, and appears at his best in his rollicking and amusing university songs.
Robert Barnabas Brough(1828-1860).
Robert Barnabas Brough was the author ofSongs of the Governing Classes(1859), a small collection of pieces, chiefly satirical, and remarkable for their vigour, point and sincerity. Strength of feeling, clearness of intellect and wit are his characteristics. Brough was generally very much in earnest, but in hisNeighbour Nelliehe showed that he could touch lighter themes very charmingly.
Charles Stuart Calverley(1831-1884).
Charles Stuart Calverley, the scholarly and witty author ofVerses and Translations(1862) andFly Leaves(1872), had a faculty for more serious things, but, partly from indifference, partly because of the accident which made great effort in his later years impossible, he never wrote anything worthy of his talents. What he has left however is the very best of its kind. He is one of the most skilful of translators; and his parodies and satiric verse are excellent.
Mortimer Collins(1827-1876).
Mortimer Collins, poet and novelist, had a very happy knack for the lighter kinds of lyrical verse, half playful and half serious. Under pressure of circumstances he wrote too much, and the failure to ‘polish and refine’ tells against a great deal of his work.
William Cory(1823-1892).
William Cory, originally Johnson, for many years one of the masters of Eton, was the author of a small volume of Poems entitledIonica(1858), which, after long neglect, won, in its third edition of 1891, the attention due to thoughtfulness and scholarly expression. Cory’s best pieces, such asMimnermus in Church, soar beyond the range of the minor poet, and show that it only needed quantity to insure him a considerable place in literature. But he wrote few such pieces, and indeed little verse of any kind afterIonica.
Sir Francis Hastings Doyle(1810-1888).
Sir Francis Hastings Doyle succeeded Matthew Arnold in the chair of poetry at Oxford. Doyle is distinguished for the spirit and the martial ring of the ballads in which he celebrates deeds of daring.The Red Thread of Honour,The Private of the Buffs, andMehrab Khanare pieces that take high rank among poems inspired by sympathy with the heroism of the soldier.
Sir Samuel Ferguson(1810-1886).
Sir Samuel Ferguson has been called the national poet of Ireland, on the score ofCongal, an epic published in 1872. He is really more remarkable for his shorter pieces, some of the best of which deal with subjects not specially Irish. He was an active contributor to theDublin University Magazineat the beginning of the period.
Adam Lindsay Gordon(1833-1870).
Adam Lindsay Gordon divides with Charles Harpur and Alfred Domett (Browning’s ‘Waring’) the honour of being laureate of the Antipodes. Wildness in youth drove him to Australia. It is probably true that but for the stirring and adventurous life there he never would have written anything of note; nevertheless, what we find in his verse is rather the spirit of the English hunting field and of English adventure the world over, than much that is distinctively Australian.
David Gray(1838-1861).
David Gray, author ofThe Luggie, a poem on a small stream which flowed near his home, was cut off too soon to do much in literature. His verse however is pleasant, and it might have acquired power. It retains a pathetic interest on account of the author’s fate. He was drawn by the hope of fame from his native village to London, caught a cold there, and died while his poem was in process of printing.
Dora Greenwell(1821-1882).
Dora Greenwell is chiefly remarkable as a writer of religious verse, the best of which is to be found inCarmina Crucis. She also wrote prose of considerable merit.
Robert Stephen Hawker(1803-1875).
Robert Stephen Hawker, a clergyman who spent his life in the remote parish of Morwenstow, in Cornwall, is best known for hisCornish Ballads(1869). The spirited and stirringSong of the Western Men, printed as early as 1826, and accepted by Scott as a genuine old ballad, is the most celebrated of all his compositions. Hawker wrote alsoThe Quest of the Sangraal(1863), a poem displaying a mysticism which must have been deep-seated in the author’s character; for it led to his reception, just before he died, into the Roman Catholic Church.
Jean Ingelow(1820-1897).
Jean Ingelow is one of the best of recent poetesses, and has also acquired a considerable, though a less conspicuous name as a writer of fiction. She is best as a lyrist, and some of her poems are touched with a very fine and true pathos. She likewise excels in the modern ballad form.
Edward Lear(1812-1888).
Edward Lear, author of theNonsense Rhymes(1861) stands high in the very peculiar and difficult kind of writing indicated by the title of his book. There are other writers of humorous verse, like Lewis Carroll, who possess greater qualities, but theNonsense Rhymesare unique for rich whimsical inventiveness. Lear was an artist as well as a writer, and illustrated his own books.
Gerald Massey(1828-1907).
Gerald Massey is a minor poet of unusual range. His attachment to the Christian Socialists gives a clue to his work; but in him the enthusiasm of humanity is concentrated in an intense patriotism. Massey’s martial verse is fine, but notquite excellent.Sir Richard Grenville’s Last Fightsuggests comparison with Tennyson’sRevenge; and the comparison illustrates the difference between good art and consummate art. Neither is Massey the equal of Doyle on this side; but he is far more varied and copious.
The Honourable Mrs. Norton(1808-1877).
The Honourable Mrs. Norton was a grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and inherited some of the family genius. Her poetic gift was not great, but her verse is spirited, and has frequently a ring of genuine pathos. Her sister, Lady Dufferin, also wrote verse, which, though less brilliant than Mrs. Norton’s, is on the whole of a more poetic quality.
Adelaide Anne Procter(1825-1864).
Adelaide Anne Procter, daughter of Barry Cornwall, was a pleasing writer of the type of Mrs. Hemans, that is to say, feminine in the less flattering sense. There is a certain grace in her verse, but it is altogether destitute of weight and power of thought. Most of her poems were originally contributed to Dickens’s papers,Household WordsandAll the Year Round.
William Caldwell Roscoe(1823-1859).
William Caldwell Roscoe was at once lyrist, dramatist and critic, but failed to achieve greatness in any of these lines. If Roscoe had lived longer he might possibly have justified the opinion of his friends; but his actual performance, though graceful, is not weighty.
William Bell Scott(1811-1890).
William Bell Scott was a poet-painter, related to and in general sympathy with the Pre-Raphaelites, but never a member of the brotherhood. Scott’s verse is characterised by mysticism; but mysticism in verse demands very skilful expression, and Scott’s power over language was not sufficient. Perhaps his best poem isThe Sphinx.
Menella Bute Smedley(1820-1877).
Menella Bute Smedley wrote both prose and verse well, and occasionally with distinction. Though an invalid, she published several volumes of poetry, and contributed to her sister, Mrs. Hart’sChild-WorldandPoems written for a Child. Miss Smedley, like so many female writers, is in many of her poems markedly patriotic, and, though sometimes too rhetorical, she is, when stirred, successful in pieces of this type.
George Walter Thornbury(1828-1876).
George Walter Thornbury, historian of the buccaneers, was also a poet who, in hisSongs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads(1857) showed considerable skill in rapid and spirited narrative. The best of his later poems are gathered up inLegendary and Historic Ballads(1875).
Aubrey de Vere(1814-1902).
Aubrey de Vere, an Irish poet, has written, in the course of his long career, a good deal of pleasing and thoughtful verse. His sonnets are especially good, as were also his father’s, but they would be still better if they were more terse. Much of his verse is religious, and the mystical tone of mind, indicative of the tendency which led him, as it led Hawker, into the Roman Catholic Church, is the one most distinctive of him.
THE LATER FICTION.
After the turn of the century fiction passes through a change similar to that of which we have seen evidence in poetry. The increased tendency to analysis, the greater frequency of the novel of purpose, and the philosophic strain conspicuous in George Eliot, all point to the operation of the forces which stimulated the intellectual movement in verse. The novelists, on the whole, take themselves more seriously than their predecessors—not always to their own advantage or that of their readers. Dickens, in his later days, is more of a reformer than at the opening of his career; and Charles Reade and Kingsley likewise make a conscious attempt to benefit society. In the case of the greatest novelist yet to be discussed this tendency to seriousness of aim grew till it injured her art. George Eliot was always serious in mind, but there is a great difference in treatment betweenScenes of Clerical LifeandDaniel Deronda.
George Eliot(1819-1880).
Mary Ann Evans, who adopted thenom de plumeof George Eliot, was the daughter of an estate agent. After the death of her mother in 1836 she was charged with the care of her father’s house. But she continued to study, her subject at this period being language, German and Italian, Latin and Greek. Her father moved in 1841 fromGriff, near Nuneaton, to Coventry. There Miss Evans came under influences which affected her whole life. Intercourse with certain friends named Bray, and the reading of books like Hennell’sInquiry concerning the Origin of Christianityoverthrew her hitherto unquestioning orthodoxy, gave to her thought a permanent bent, and introduced her to literature. A project for translating Strauss’sLeben Jesuinto English had been for some time entertained; the person who originally undertook the work had to abandon it; and Miss Evans took her place.The Life of Jesuswas published in 1846. Miss Evans afterwards translated also Feuerbach’sEssence of Christianity(1854), the only book ever published under her own name.
The death of her father in 1849 left her without domestic ties, and in 1850 or 1851 she accepted the position of assistant editor of theWestminster Review. In 1854 she took the most questionable step of her life. She went to live with George Henry Lewes, not only without the ceremony of marriage, but while he had a wife still living. All that can be said in defence has been said by herself; but there are several passages in her works which show that she was permanently uneasy, and was not fully convinced that what she had done was right either towards herself or towards society.
Apart from the moral and social aspects of the question, the influence of Lewes upon George Eliot’s literary career seems to have been mixed. On the one hand, it must be said that he acted with a delicate generosity for which his general character hardly prepares us. He encouraged her efforts, recognised her genius, avowed that all he was and all he did himself were due to her, and voluntarily sank into the second place. It is at least possible that without such fostering care the genius of George Eliot would not have run so smooth and successful a course. Further, thevery difficulties due to the relation add a deeper note to her voice. There is often a solemn, almost tragic tone in her utterances about domestic life which might have been absent had all been smooth between the world and herself.
On the other hand, Lewes, loyally as he effaced himself, could not but foster tendencies in her mind which were strong enough without his encouragement. He was a philosopher, imbued with the tenets of positivism; and she was naturally prone to be fascinated by abstract thought. Not that she was ever exactly original in philosophic speculation: the danger would have been less had she been so. But she hungered for philosophy, took the results proclaimed for absolute truth, and wove them into the fabric of her own work. From theScenes of Clerical LifetoDaniel DerondaandTheophrastus Suchher writings became more and more loaded with philosophy. The two last-named books are decidedly overloaded; and evenMiddlemarch, the most massive, and probably on the whole the greatest outcome of her genius, would be still greater were it somewhat lightened of the burden.
Blackwood, the nurse of so much genius, in January, 1857, contained the first part of what became theScenes of Clerical Life.Adam Bedeappeared in 1859,The Mill on the Flossin the following year, andSilas Marnerin 1861.Romola(1863) was the outcome of a journey to Italy in 1860. AfterFelix Holt(1866) George Eliot attempted poetry, and visited Spain to gather materials forThe Spanish Gypsy(1868). Her only other long poem,The Legend of Jubal, was published with other pieces in 1874.Middlemarchwas issued in eight parts in 1871 and 1872.Daniel Deronda(1876) was her last novel; and theImpressions of Theophrastus Such(1879) was her last work. In 1878 Lewes died; and in April, 1880, George Eliotmarried Mr. J. W. Cross, but survived the union less than a year, dying December 22, 1880.
George Eliot’s place is certainly among the great novelists. At the lowest, she is classed after Scott, Dickens and Thackeray (and a few might add Jane Austen); at the highest, she is placed above them all. She carried by storm the intellect of one of the most thoughtful and weighty of critics, Edmond Scherer, who in hisÉtudes sur la Littérature Contemporainedevoted three essays to her, which have been admirably translated by Professor Saintsbury. In the last of these Scherer goes so far as to say that for her ‘was reserved the honour of writing the most perfect novels yet known.’ In spite of the note of exaggeration this judgment is significant. Only a writer, not merely of genius, but of great genius, could have drawn it from a critic so sober-minded; a foreigner, unbiassed by the predilections of patriotism; a man of wide knowledge, well aware of all that his sweeping assertion implied.
Most writers, even the greatest, have loaded themselves with a weight of literary lumber. George Eliot carries less of suchimpedimentathan many, but it will be well nevertheless to put aside at once such works as are neither in her special field nor in her best manner. Under this head fall the heavy and laboured volume of essays entitledImpression of Theophrastus Such, and also the poems. The latter, thoughtful, and occasionally eloquent, nevertheless prove that the writer had not the gift of verse. Richard Congreve describedThe Spanish Gypsyas ‘a mass of positivism.’ The description is accurate; and perhaps the fact that it is so is, to others who are not positivists, a heavier objection than it was to him.The Legend of Jubal, though better, is not great poetry.
Leaving these works then aside, the novels of GeorgeEliot fall pretty clearly into three groups, which conform to the divisions of chronology. In the first we have at one extreme theScenes of Clerical Life, and at the otherSilas Marner; in the secondRomolastands alone; in the third,Felix Holt, the weakest if not the least readable of all, is transitional; whileMiddlemarchandDaniel Derondaillustrate her later manner respectively in full flower and in decay.
Each of these groups has found special admirers among critics. George Eliot herself was disposed to preferRomolato all her other works; but she seems to have been swayed by the consideration that it had cost her more than any other book.Romolahas been praised also as a marvellous picture of Florentine life in the fifteenth century. Only men who are profoundly versed in Italian character, literature and history are entitled to pronounce upon the question; and they are few in number. But if the statement be true the fact is wonderful, for George Eliot had only spent about six weeks in Florence before she wrote the book. In any case it smells of the lamp, and we may therefore suspect that it will give less permanent pleasure than most of her novels. Tito Melema is admitted to be a masterpiece of subtle delineation; but for the most part the picture of Romola, her home and her associates, is laboured to a degree almost painful.
Of the two other groups, if we take them as wholes, there can be little hesitation in assigning the palm to the earlier. The excellence here is evener, the artistic skill finer, the style more uniformly pleasing. The evenness of quality is proved by the fact that each work in turn has been praised as the author’s best, or at least as equal to her best; whereas there can be no reasonable doubt about the pre-eminence ofMiddlemarchin the last group. The artistic excellence, again, ofSilas Marner, perhaps themost faultless (which does not necessarily mean the best) of English novels, is as conspicuous as are the artistic defects ofMiddlemarch. And as to style, nearly all readers have felt how the fresh, easy grace, the flexibility of language, the lightness of touch, gradually disappear from the works of George Eliot; and how in her later books passages of genuine eloquence, masterly dialogue or description or reflexion, are mingled with leaden paragraphs wherein the author seems to be struggling under a burden too great for her strength.
The early novels then have the advantage of grace, spontaneity, and the charm exercised by a great writer when the great work is done without apparent effort. Like a giant wielding a club, George Eliot seems to execute the heavy tasks imposed byAdam BedeandThe Mill on the Flosswith an ease possible only because there is a reserve of strength behind. But some of these early products of genius, and among them the most charming of all, could hardly be repeated. Has child-life ever been as delightfully represented in literature as in the first part ofThe Mill on the Floss? But one secret of the charm is that the book, especially in this part, is autobiographical. Again, in theScenes of Clerical Lifeand inAdam Bedethe writer moves easily among characters with whom she had been familiar from girlhood. The religious enthusiasm of Dinah Morris is partly a reminiscence of her own early feelings, and partly a picture of her aunt Elizabeth; while in Adam Bede, as afterwards in Caleb Garth, may be seen the features of her own father. In those early years George Eliot skimmed the cream of her experience. Like Scott, she began to write novels rather late. Her powers were therefore mature, and in her first books she combines the perfect freshness of a new writer with the weight and the range of an experienced one.
Thoughtfulness and serious purpose were from the start conspicuous in the writings of George Eliot. It is the overgrowth of these qualities, to the detriment of the artistic element, that mars her later works.Daniel Derondais ruined by its philosophy and its didactic purpose. The style is ponderous and often clumsy, and the question of heredity is made too prominent.Middlemarchtoo shows signs of failure on the part of the artist. More than almost any other great novel, it sins against the law of unity. The stories of Dorothea and Casaubon and Ladislaw, of Lydgate and Rosamond, of the Garths, and of Bulstrode, are tacked together by the most flimsy external bonds. They all illustrate a single thesis; but it is for this, and not for their natural connexion, that they are chosen. The keynote of the whole novel is struck in the prelude; and, as in the case of the young Saint Theresa and her brother, we see throughout ‘domestic reality,’ in diverse shapes, meeting the idealist and turning him back from his great resolve. But even want of unity will be pardoned, provided the details are conceived and presented in the manner of an artist, as they are inMiddlemarch. Some of George Eliot’s books contain fresher pictures than we find here, but none contains more that dwell in the mind, and in none is her maturest thought so well expressed.Middlemarchgives us one of the rarest things in literature, the philosophy of a powerful mind presented with all the charm of art. For this reason it at least rivals the best work of her first period.